PC Gaming and Steam Thread

[Otaking]

The vast majority of my gaming these days is on PC, so I'm always looking for games to check out, can be classic retro PC games or modern. I currently can't do too modern as my graphics card can't do the cutting edge 2016/17 stuff.

What PC games do you love and recommend?

What PC games do you hate and recommend to avoid?

Also hardware discussion, 

what graphics card?

What CPU overclocks best?

Best gaming mouse and keyboard?

etc..

 

[780racer]

What PC games do you love and recommend? Half life series, WoW, DOOM, (Most of the AAA games also on consoles) CSGO, Overwatch, Star craft 2, League of legends, Stardew valley

What PC games do you hate and recommend to avoid? Anything from Warner bros, and most ubisoft games personally

Also hardware discussion,  AMD is actually making a big comeback in the PC space, and its very refreshing. I Personally prefer AMD to Intel.

what graphics card? Im running a 1070 which will run pretty much anything not 4K at 60 FPS, You can get  4K 30FPS pending games and settings. Nvidia really is kicking ass in the Gcard space. If you dont want to spend quite 1070 money, the 1060 is a solid choice for 1080P gaming.


Best gaming mouse and keyboard? Personally I prefer Mechanical cherry Red MX switched Keyboards for gaming, and spring buckle IBM keyboards for typing. Honestly, get whatever you feel is best for you.

Edit: Ill mention Zowie Optical mice here, along with Razers DeathAdder. The Zowie is a much nicer mouse, that will last longer, as the death adder has been proven to have very shit Micro switches that wear out relatively fast in comparison to other mice. #RaZERqUALITY

We could go down the Optical Mouse is best hole, but until you get into really high level Competitive play, you won't truly benefit from it, and you have to be talking about high skill shot/FPS games.

Feel free to hit me up if you ever has questions. But lets try and see if you can answer what your goals are and budget? VR? 4K? Monies?!

[Gypsy]

What PC games do you hate and recommend to avoid? Anything from Warner bros, and most ubisoft games personally

<3

I will specifically recommend Divinity Original Sin if you haven't played that yet OP. It's GAS.

For old games my favourites will always be stuff like Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. I have a crap ton of stuff on Gog in general. What are your favourite genres OP?

My video card is getting ooooold John. A 980 iirc, I need to update it lol. My main monitor is an Acer XB270HU. Corsair Vengeance K90 keyboard. RAZER NAGA EPIC EXTREME mouse. Had most of this stuff for 3+ years now (monitor was a bit more recent had it for almost two years) and it has all stood up to my abuse and is functioning well.

[Opethian]

if you got steam id check out the following as they don't require any crazy GPU to run:
Hotline Miami 1&2
Shovel Knight
Rogue Legacy
Axiom Verge
La Mulana
Cave Story
Papers Please

[Gypsy]

Can confirm Shovel Knight is great.

[780racer]

Can confirm Papers please is also epic. also shovel knight is the best!

If you don't need VR that bumps you down to either a 1060 or even lower cards which means less monies.

[Otaking]

Feel free to hit me up if you ever has questions. But lets try and see if you can answer what your goals are and budget? VR? 4K? Monies?!

I use my PC as a Pro Audio Workstation so a high end graphics card was not a priority when I built it (around 4 years ago) and all the space inside the case is taken up with audio related cards.
My graphics card is an NVIDIA GeForce GT 430, back when I bought it I just picked a cheap graphics card that had passive cooling and two DVI outputs, at that time I wasn't really thinking I would be playing advanced games on it.
My CPU is an intel core i7 2600K.

From around 2003-2012 I was really into building PCs (mainly for pro audio) I was really up to date with it all then, but now have lost track of that side of things, I think mainly as for my audio work my PC has been absolutely fine with handling anything I throw at it.

Just more recently I was thinking I'd like to play some of the latest games and in 4K at 60FPS, not gonna do VR yet, maybe later down the line.
So yeah I'm in the market for 2 new 4K monitor screens, a graphics card that is as quiet as possible and preferably as small as possible that outputs 4K. I'll also need to buy a new PSU if I'm getting a proper graphics card.

Regards mouse I have a Razer Deathadder Chroma and some shitty HP keyboard.

[780racer]

I use my PC as a Pro Audio Workstation so a high end graphics card was not a priority when I built it (around 4 years ago) and all the space inside the case is taken up with audio related cards.
My graphics card is an NVIDIA GeForce GT 430, back when I bought it I just picked a cheap graphics card that had passive cooling and two DVI outputs, at that time I wasn't really thinking I would be playing advanced games on it.
My CPU is an intel core i7 2600K.

From around 2003-2012 I was really into building PCs (mainly for pro audio) I was really up to date with it all then, but now have lost track of that side of things, I think mainly as for my audio work my PC has been absolutely fine with handling anything I throw at it.

Just more recently I was thinking I'd like to play some of the latest games and in 4K at 60FPS, not gonna do VR yet, maybe later down the line.
So yeah I'm in the market for 2 new 4K monitor screens, a graphics card that is as quiet as possible and preferably as small as possible that outputs 4K. I'll also need to buy a new PSU if I'm getting a proper graphics card.

Regards mouse I have a Razer Deathadder Chroma and some shitty HP keyboard.

4K 60 FPS will be a 1080... Or the TitanX. Esp. depending on the level/quality you are expecting and the game as that can make a big difference.

I may suggest a 1080P/1280P screen that is 144Hz/120Hz for a smoother experience rather than 4K resolution at a 60 FPS experience. But this will depend what games you want to play. Also to be clear, the games will be smoother using a higher refresh rate ONLY if you can push the matching FPS, meaning if you have a 144Hz/Refresh rate, you have to run 144 Frames Per Second or its sort of a wash.

Regarding "Small" and outputs 4K games, its not a thing. The 1070/1080 are the most powerful cards on the market, and they are absolutely massive. They are quite as when not being pushed they normally will sit with 0 fan speed, until they actually get "hot" and need to kick the fan(s) on.

A 700 Watt power supply will be enough, New cards are also super Energy efficient compared to a few years ago, also explains how they are running cooler as mentioned above.

Getting into 4k waters will get you a rig that is ready to use VR, as honestly its cheaper to get into VR than 4k. (regarding building the computer, not screens/VR headset included)

Maybe upgrade the keyboard, Keep the mouse.

Also CPUs play "Less" of a role now than they did say 3 years ago. In gaming the developers and G card companies have found that having the G card do all of the heavy lifting can cause better performance, so they generally these days push very little over to the CPU, so that i7 you have should work fine for the foreseeable future, at least till teh next gen console stuff drops, that is generally the "Time" computers/ect need to upgrade that may be not on the newest stuff.

Also SLI is kinda ded, so if you really want 4K 60 FPS on new games, get your pocket book ready. Cause you will prolly need the Titan X or 1080TI which will both be 600-800+ G cards.

[Otaking]

Thanks for the info, I didn't realise how hard it would be to get 4K at 60FPS when I said it before.

So how does 4K work, are most of the new games on Steam able to display in 4K or is it a only a handful of games?

I'll have to pull out my computer to see what card slots are free and if there's enough room for a larger graphics card.

[780racer]

Thanks for the info, I didn't realise how hard it would be to get 4K at 60FPS when I said it before.

So how does 4K work, are most of the new games on Steam able to display in 4K or is it a only a handful of games?

I'll have to pull out my computer to see what card slots are free and if there's enough room for a larger graphics card.

The game has to support 4K which "MOST" New games will have the option to output it, but its all on the Developer of the title. So future games 'should' support 4k.

However, As stated above I think a nice 1280p 120/144hz screen is offer a MUCH better gaming experience rather than a 4k.

4K is still kind of off in the distance.... at least in PC elitists eyes. I say that because we generally like to have over 90FPS similarly to VR to make the entire experience as "Nice/Smooth" as can be no matter how much action is going on the screen. You should really do some research if you are unsure of my claims about wanting higher Frame rates, as there is a TON of information that talks about it, and i will let you make your own choices from there.

You may just need to upgrade to a new Tower which is somewhat cheap, to ensure you have enough room. I would assume you have a PCI-E 16X Gcard slot on your mobo, that is not being used for a sound card or something else.

But when talking about PC gaming in general. Its either best to have "No expectations" - Meaning, you are just upgrading to upgrade for X reason (Higher frame rate/Bad hardware/Bored)

Or know exactly what you want, and then go from there. It sounds like you want to get into PC gaming which is awesome. Seriously, I love PC gaming.

However, You hear 144Hz Gsync. 4k, 8k, VR, and all these terms and its like OOOOooOOooo. Ahhhhhhhh

When in reality, you might actually just wanna be able to game without any issues, with good frame rates/overclock/whatever.

I hope I can help answer any other questions you have and maybe other will give some input as well. But the amount of money you want to spend definitely shapes WHAT you can get.

Also worth noting- You may know what SLI is. And its fairly Dead these days. Nvidea is moving away from this, its currently the only way to get really high Frame rates on 4k, but only specific games will truly use the 2x graphics cards, and its hell pricey.

I personally feel its better to just get 1 card with whatever expectation then doing SLI/Crossfire and getting less than 40% increase in power for literally double the price, plus costs in needing a stupid large case/PSU/cooling.
 

[sunteam_paul]

I enjoy the open-world-with-main-storyline-plus-extras kind of thing so I like the Batman games, Mad Max, Shadow of Mordor and the new Tomb Raiders (although they really need to start skewing them towards the classic style in future games).

I also really enjoy a good session on Civ V.

Alien Isolation is good once you get over your fear of the alien, which can be hard to do. I nearly gave up at one point as it became a 'hide in a locker simulator' but I'm glad I persevered.

[780racer]

I also really enjoy a good 10 hour rage inducing session of Civ V.

Fixed

I do love Civ V and the new Civ 6 as well.

Outlast is another scary game that has gotten great reviews if you like pooping your pants.
The new DOOM is also another Great title to play. Its really really good.

[Otaking]

Thanks for your post 780racer.
I've been thinking about it.
Regards 4K I was already thinking of getting two new 4K screens regardless of gaming, just to use for my audio work and also watching 4K Movies. The 4K image quality over everything else interests me.

Other than 4K I'm not massively crazy to play the latest games at ultra settings in super high FPS, yeah it would've been nice if was easy to do, but it's not a deal breaker if I can't have it.
For example recently on Steam I bought the BioShock Remastered trilogy and Black Mesa and my current PC can run those games on their max settings, and I'm having huge fun playing them, it's what cemented that I'm now a PC gamer.
So yeah would like to get a better graphics card mainly for 4K display for general use and games, but doesn't have to be the best of the best, how quiet the card is will be by far the biggest purchase factor for me, hence why I bought that passively cooled card before.

And money wise I'm not rich, but for this it's not a big issue, anywhere from £100-£600.

Later this evening I'm gonna pull out my computer and have a look inside and see what the current situation is, I think it was pretty cramped with all the audio related cards I had in there.
I really like my PC case I wouldn't want to change it, it's really quiet and I've swapped out the stock fans to practically silent fans. http://www.coolermaster.com/case/mid-tower/silencio-550/
the PC as it is now runs nearly silently which for audio work is really important.

[wildfruit]

I have a fairly basic setup of G3258 @. 3.8Ghz with a 750ti. It can output 4k but only at 30Hz. Tried playing games but frame rates were atrocious.
Any hoot I second half life 2. Amazing masterpiece. Transport tycoon still holds up, there's even a free open source version called open TTD. Revisit the old lucasarts classics with scummvm and take settlers 2 for a whirl.
Newer games I don't play much, only overwatch. It's heller addictive, frantic fun.

[Punch]

I have a Sager notebook with a Geforce 950m and while I've beaten MGSV with it, it kinda suffers with new games. I want to make a PC but I'm short on cash so I'll just play games on PS4 when available for now.